Harriet Harman rejects allegations of 1970s link to paedophile campaign

The Labour deputy leader, Harriet Harman, said 'the accusations of the Daily Mail are untrue and beneath contempt'. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

Harriet Harman has attacked the Daily Mail for launching a "politically-motivated smear campaign" against her and her husband, Jack Dromey, over claims they were linked to a paedophile campaign in the 1970s.

The Labour deputy leader condemned the "horrific allegations" and issued a point-by-point rebuttal on Monday, after the newspaper tried to link the couple and former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt to the now defunct Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

She said the newspaper was trying to make her "guilty by way of association", while Dromey said the allegations were "beneath contempt", especially as he had been at the "forefront of repeated public condemnations of the Paedophile Information Exchange and their despicable views".

Harman's forthright attack on the Daily Mail echoes Ed Miliband's decision to publicly address claims made by the newspaper about his family. The Labour leader clashed with the newspaper after a story last year branded his father, Ralph Miliband, who was a Marxist academic, as the "man who hated Britain".

The Labour deputy leader said in a statement: "This is not the first time the Daily Mail has made this horrible and untrue allegation.

"And, this is not the first time the Daily Mail has attacked me. The editor and proprietor of the Daily Mail are entitled to their political views and they are of course entitled to oppose what I stand for but they are not entitled to use their newspaper to smear me with innuendo because they disagree with me politically and hate my values."

In a series of articles, the Mail had accused Harman and Dromey of being apologists for child sex abuse, having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and wanting to water down child pornography laws when they were officials at the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), which at one point was affliated to the PIE.

After the Mail had called for the Labour leadership to speak out on the issue, Harman was strongly backed by Ed Miliband, who praised her "huge decency and integrity".

"I have known her for 20 years," he told Sky News on Monday. "I do not set any store by these allegations. I know she has a long and proud record of being on the right side of all of these issues."

The allegations date back to a time when Harman, Dromey and Hewitt worked at the NCCL, now known as Liberty, in the late 1970s.

The NCCL is reported to have granted affiliate status to the controversial PIE group, which was lobbying for paedophile rights, in 1975 and lobbied for the age of consent to be lowered to as young as 10. The Mail also accused Harman of signing an NCCL document suggesting ways to relax child pornography laws when she was legal officer for the group.

Harman attempted to rebut the allegations one by one. She said she supported the equalisation of the age of consent for gay and heterosexual sex, but never campaigned for the age of consent to be lowered to 10.

She also rejected the idea that she opposed the law on incest, saying the 1976 document referred to by the Mail was written before she started to work at the organisation.

On the allegation that she was seeking to water down a proposed ban on child pornography, Harman said the document she signed makes it clear that the NCCL "deplores the exploitation of children whether in the form of use in commercial pornography or as victims of sexual assaults".

It simply argued for amendments to stop parents being criminalised for taking pictures of their children on the beach or in the bath, the use of pictures in sex education being criminalised and the use of the word "obscene" instead of "indecent" as that could be considered too broad, including page 3 of the Sun.

She said anyone could apply to join the NCCL on payment of a fee and the PIE was just one of nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations.

In a separate statement, Dromey said: "Sexual abuse of children is evil and I have always viewed paedophiles and any group associated with them as evil. During my time on the NCCL executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views.

"Then, when I was elected chairman, I took them on. I personally chaired the NCCL conference that, on my recommendation, refused to back by a massive majority a loathsome motion from a leading light in PIE calling on NCCL to support the so-called 'rights' of paedophiles. Indeed, my stand was denounced in a leaflet distributed by PIE to the delegates to the conference."

He added: "As a lifelong opponent of evil men who abuse children, the accusations of the Daily Mail are untrue and beneath contempt."

Labour sources said Miliband had also thoroughly looked into the claims made by the Mail and "regards them as complete nonsense".

"There is a strong feeling in the party that this is a politically-motivated campaign by the Daily Mail," a senior source said. Hewitt has not commented.